Remarried In Haste
Sandra Field
Back to the altar… ! For the first time in his life, Brant Curtis had acted on impulse. He'd arranged to meet Rowan, his ex-wife… one last time! Only, now that she was in front of him, he found he needed to kiss her so badly that he could taste her lips.But, as Rowan pointed out, it took more than physical attraction to make a marriage work. Marriage? Brant hadn't bargained on another trip to the altar, but he wanted Rowan back in his life - whatever it took!
“You’re just another client to me.” (#ucfcb6f50-2480-507d-b4b0-ba22476e6485)About the Author (#u81c0ea6e-2b3f-5365-9188-d91c99f906fe)Title Page (#uc4aa8863-70e5-56c7-9b08-2ecebf2dac11)PROLOGUE (#u9d17f472-3aa5-5094-9695-cb6eb3e474c2)CHAPTER ONE (#u622417f8-daef-5e3e-ba16-0a95dede3f19)CHAPTER TWO (#ue81715f4-b280-5e21-afc7-56852877016c)CHAPTER THREE (#u7c6ded8a-8be0-5c6f-a1eb-ab4aa7835982)CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
“You’re just another client to me.”
“I haven’t said I want to be anything else,” Brant remarked.
“Good,” she said viciously. “You’re in room 9—here’s your key.”
She was holding it in her fingertips. To test his immunity to her, Brant deliberately closed his hand over hers, and as soon as he’d done so, knew he’d made a very bad mistake. Her skin was warm and smooth, with that supple strength he’d forgotten.
He snatched the key from her. Rowan hurried past him and unlocked the door to room 10, entered the room and shut the door with rather more force than was necessary.
Brant stood very still under the moon. He wanted Rowan—in his bed, in his arms, where she belonged—and to hell with the divorce. How was he going to get a minute’s sleep, knowing she was on the other side of the wall from him?
Although born in England, SANDRA FIELD has lived most of her life in Canada; she says the silence and emptiness of the north speaks to her particularly. While she enjoys traveling, and passing on her sense of a new place, she often chooses to write about the city that is now her home. Sandra says, “I write out of my experience. I have learned that love with its joys and its pains is all-important. I hope this knowledge enriches my writing, and touches a chord in you, the reader.”
Remarried in Haste
Sandra Field
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
PROLOGUE
“IT’s time you go and see your wife, Brant.”
The rounded beach stone Brant had been idly playing with slipped from his fingers and fell to the floor. The noise it made seemed disproportionately loud, jarring his nerves. He bent to pick it up and said coolly, “I don’t have a wife.”
Equally coolly, Gabrielle said, “Her name’s Rowan.”
“We’re divorced. As well you know.”
Gabrielle Doucette was leaning back in her seat, her legs slung carelessly over one arm of the chair; her bundled black hair and deep blue eyes were very familiar to him, as was her ability to look totally relaxed in tense situations. “Sometimes,” she said, “a divorce is just a legal document, a piece of paper with printing on it. Nothing to do with the heart.”
“I was legally separated for a year, and I’ve been divorced for fourteen months,” Brant said tightly. “In all that time I’ve neither heard from Rowan nor seen her. Her lawyer sent back my first batch of support checks with a letter that told me, more or less politely, to get lost. The letter with the second batch was considerably less polite. All of which, to my mind, indicates something a little more significant than a mere legal document.”
Gabrielle stared thoughtfully into her glass of wine; they had eaten bouillabaisse, which was her specialty, and had moved from the table to sit by the window of her Toronto condominium, which overlooked the constant traffic of the 401. “On her part, maybe.”
“On mine, too.” Brant tipped back his glass, draining it. “When are you going to produce the delectable dessert I know you’ve got hidden away somewhere in the refrigerator?”
“When I’m ready.” She smiled at him, a smile of genuine affection. “You and I were thrown together for eight months under circumstances that were far from ordinary—”
“That’s the understatement of the year,” he said; the stinking cells, the oppressive heat, the inevitable illnesses to which they’d both succumbed had been quite extraordinarily unpleasant. Not to say life-threatening.
“—Yet you never fell in love with me.”
He opted for a partial truth; he had no intention of telling her certain of the reasons why he hadn’t fallen in love with her, they were entirely too personal. “I knew you weren’t available,” he said. “You still haven’t gotten over Daniel’s death.” Daniel had been her husband of seven years, who’d died in a car accident before Brant had met Gabrielle.
“True enough.”
He looked around the stark and ultramodern room. “Besides, I don’t like your taste in furniture.”
She chuckled. “That, also, is true. But I think there’s another reason. You didn’t fall in love with me because you still love Rowan.”
Brant had seen this coming. Keeping his hands loose on the stem of his glass, he said, “You’re missing out by being a labor negotiator, Gabrielle—you should be writing fiction.”
“And how would you feel if you heard Rowan was about to remarry?”
His whole body went rigid; for a split second he was twenty-six years old again, back in Angola that sultry evening when a live grenade had arched gracefully through the air toward him and his feet had felt like lumps of concrete. He rasped, “Is she? Who told you?”
Gabrielle smiled again, a rather smug smile. “So you do care. I thought you did.”
“Very clever,” Brant said, making no attempt to mask his anger; he and Gabrielle had long ago passed the point of being polite to each other for the sake of outward appearances.
“It’s bound to happen sooner or later,” Gabrielle continued placidly. “Rowan is a beautiful and talented young woman.”
“What she does with her life is nothing to do with me.”
Quite suddenly Gabrielle snapped her glass down on the chrome-edged table beside her. “All right—I’ll stop playing games. I’ve watched you the last two years. You’ve been acting like a man possessed. Like a man who couldn’t care less if he got himself killed. Any ordinary person would have been dead five times over with some of the things you’ve done, the situations you’ve exposed yourself to since you and Rowan split up.” Her voice broke very slightly. “I don’t want to pick up the paper one day and find myself reading your obituary.”
Brant said blankly, for it was a possibility that had never occurred to him before, “You’re not in love with me, are you?”
He looked so horrified that genuine amusement lightened her features. “Of course not. Someday I’m sure I’ll fall in love again, it would be an insult to Daniel’s.memory if I didn’t But it won’t be with you, Brant.”
“You had me worried for a moment.”
“And if you’re trying to change the subject,” Gabrielle went on with considerable determination, “it won’t work. I know you still love Rowan. After all, you and I virtually lived together for the eight months we were held for ransom, I had lots of opportunity to observe you. One of the things that kept you sane through that terrible time was the knowledge you’d be going home to Rowan. Your wife.”
Through gritted teeth Brant said, “Your imagination’s operating overtime.”
Imperturbably Gabrielle went on, “And then we were released unexpectedly. When you got home she was leading a tour in Greenland, and when she got back from there her lawyer made it all too clear that Rowan wanted nothing to do with you because she thought you and I were a number. You wouldn’t let me go and see her to try and explain—oh, no, you were much too proud for that. In fact, you made me swear I wouldn’t get in touch with her at all, stiffnecked idiot that you are. So you lost her. And you’ve never stopped grieving that loss. I know you haven’t. I’d swear it in court on a stack of Bibles as high as this building.”
“Dammit, I’m divorced! And that’s the way I like it.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
He surged to his feet. “I’ve had enough of this—I’m getting out of here.”
“Can’t take the heat? Afraid you might have to admit to emotions? You, Brant Curtis, feeling pain because a woman left you?” She swung her legs to the floor and stood up, too, with a touch of awkwardness that reminded him, sharply and painfully, of Rowan’s sudden, coltlike movements. “I know you have feelings,” Gabrielle announced, “even if I don’t know why you’ve repressed them so drastically they don’t have the slightest chance of escaping... sort of like us in that awful cell. You have them, though—and they’re killing you.”
“You’ve got a great touch with purple prose.”
“So you’re a coward,” she said flatly.
Her words bit deep into a place Brant rarely acknowledged to himself and certainly never would to anyone else. Of course he wasn’t a coward. If anything, he was the exact opposite, a man who continually took risks for the highs they gave him. He headed for the door, throwing the words over his shoulder. “Remind me the next time you invite me for dinner to say no.”
“You need to see Rowan!”
“I don’t know where she is and I’m not going looking for her!”
“I know where she is.” Gabrielle turned and from a wrought-iron shelf picked up a folded brochure, waving it in the air. “In three days she’ll be leading a small group of people through various islands in the West Indies looking for endemic birds. Which, in case you didn’t know, means birds native to the area. I had to look it up.”
In spite of himself, Brant’s eyes had flown to the folded piece of paper and his feet had glued themselves to the parquet floor. Conquering the urge to snatch the brochure from her, he rapped, “So what?”
“There’s a vacancy on that trip. My friend Sonia’s husband—Rick Williams—was to have gone, but he’s come down with a bad respiratory infection. You could take his place.”
His mouth dry, Brant sneered, “Me? Looking for endemic birds on those cute little Caribbean islands? That’s like telling a mercenary soldier he’s going back to kindergarten.”
“You’d be looking for your wife, Brant.” Gabrielle’s smile was ironic. “Looking for your life, Brant. You didn’t know I was a poet, did you?”
“You’ve been watching too many soap operas.”
“Kindly don’t insult me!”
His lashes flickered. Gabrielle almost never lost her temper, unlike Rowan, who lost it frequently.
Rowan. He’d always loved her name. His first gift to her had been a pair of earrings he’d had designed especially for her, little enameled bunches of the deep orange berries of the rowan tree, berries as fiery-colored as her tumbled, shoulder-length hair. Spread on the pillow, her hair had had the glow of fire....
With an exclamation of disgust, because many months ago he’d rigorously trained himself to forget everything that had happened between him and Rowan in their big bed, he held out his hand. Gabrielle passed him the brochure. Brant flattened it; from long years of hiding anything remotely like fear, his hands were as steady as if he were unfolding the daily newspaper. “‘Endemic Birds of the Eastern Caribbean,’” he read. “‘Guided by Rowan Carter.”’
She’d kept her own name even when they’d been married. For business reasons, she’d said. Although afterward, when she’d left him, he’d wondered if it had been for other, more hidden and more complicated reasons.
He cleared his throat. “You’re suggesting I phone the company Rowan works for and propose myself as a substitute for your friend’s husband? Rowan, as I recall, has a fair bit of say about the trips she runs—the last person in the world she’d allow to go on one of them would be me.”
“Don’t tell her. Just turn up.”
His jaw dropped. For the space of a full five seconds he looked at Gabrielle in silence. “Intrigue,” he said, “that’s what you should be writing.”
“Rick can cancel easily enough—he bought insurance and he’ll get his money back. Or you can pay him for the trip and go in his place. All you’d have to do is change the airline tickets to your name.”
“So I’d turn up at the airport in—” he ran his eyes down the page “—Grenada, and say, ‘Oh, by the way, Rowan, Rick couldn’t make it so I thought I’d come instead.’” He gave an unamused bark of laughter. “She’d throw me on the first plane back to Toronto.”
“Then it’ll be up to you to convince her otherwise.”
“You’ve never met her—you have no idea how stubborn she can be.”
“Like calls to like?” Gabrielle asked gently.
“Oh, do shut up,” he snapped. “Of course I’m not going, it’s a crazy idea.” Nevertheless, with a detached part of his brain, Brant noticed he hadn’t put the brochure back on the shelf. Or—more appropriately—thrown it to the floor and trampled on it.
“I made tiramisu for dessert. And I’ll put the coffee on.”
Gabrielle vanished into the kitchen. Like a man who couldn’t help himself, Brant started reading the description of the trip that would be leaving on Wednesday. Seven different islands, two nights on each except for the final island of Antigua, where a one-night stopover was scheduled. Hiking in rain forests and mangrove swamps, opportunities for swimming and snorkeling.
Opportunities for being with Rowan.
For two whole weeks.
He was mad to even consider it. Rowan didn’t want anything to do with him, she’d made that abundantly clear. So why set himself up for another rejection when he was doing just fine as he was?
Because he was doing fine. Gabrielle’s imagination was way out of line with all her talk of love and needs and repressions. He didn’t need Rowan any more than Rowan needed him.
He’d hated it when his checks had been returned by that smooth-tongued bastard of a lawyer. Hated not knowing where she was living. Hated it most of all that she’d never wanted to see him again.
But he’d gotten over that. Gotten over it and gone on with his life, the only kind of life he thrived on.
The last thing he needed was to see Rowan again.
What he needed was a cup of strong black coffee and a bowl of tiramisu laden with marscapone. Brant tossed the brochure onto the dining room table and followed Gabrielle into the kitchen.
CHAPTER ONE
AT THIRTY-seven thousand feet the clouds looked solid enough to walk on, and the sky was a guileless blue. Brant stretched his legs into the comfortable amount of space his executive seat allowed him and gazed out of the window. He was flying due south, nonstop, from Toronto to Antigua; in Antigua he’d board a short hop to Grenada.
Where Rowan should be on hand to meet him.
Among the various documents Rick had given him had been a list of participants; he, Brant, was the only Canadian other than Rowan on the trip. Therefore, he’d presumably be the only one coming in on that particular Hight; the rest of the group would fly via Puerto Rico or Miami.
It should be an interesting meeting.
Which didn’t answer the question of why he was going to Grenada.
His dinner with Gabrielle had been last Sunday. On Monday he’d phoned Rick’s wife Sonia and told her he’d take Rick’s tickets. On Tuesday his boss—that enigmatic figure who owned and managed an international, prestigious and highly influential magazine of political commentary—bad sent a fax requesting him to go to Myanmar, as Burma was now known, and write an article on the heroin trade. Whereupon Brant had almost phoned Sonia back. He liked going to Myanmar, it had that constant miasma of danger on which he flourished. His whole life revolved around places like that.
Grenada wouldn’t make the list of the world’s most dangerous places. Not by a long shot.
So why was he going to Grenada and not Myanmar?
To prove himself right, he thought promptly. To prove he no longer had any feelings for Rowan.
Yeah? He was spending one hell of a lot of money to prove something he’d told Gabrielle didn’t need proving.
And why did he, right now, have that sensation of supervigilance, of every nerve keyed to its highest pitch, the very same feeling that always accompanied him on his assignments?
Don’t try and answer that one, Brant Curtis, he told himself ironically, watching a cloud drift by that had the hooked neck and forked tongue of a prehistoric sea monster. He’d told his boss he had plans for a well-earned vacation; and the only reason he’d phoned Sonia back was to borrow Rick’s high-powered binoculars and a bird book about the West Indies. The book was now sitting in his lap, along with a list of the birds they were likely to see. He hadn’t opened either one.
Why in God’s name was he wasting two weeks of his precious time to go and see a woman who thought he was a liar and a cheat? A sexual cheat. How she’d laugh if she knew that somehow, in the eight months he and Gabrielle had been held for ransom in Colombia, Gabrielle had seemed more like the sister he’d never had, the mother he could only dimly remember, than a potential bed partner. This despite the fact that Gabrielle was a very attractive woman.
He’d never told Gabrielle that, and never would. Nor would he ever tell Rowan.
A man was entitled to his secrets.
Tension had pulled tight the muscles in Brant’s neck and shoulders; he was aware of his heartbeat thin and high in his chest. But those weren’t feelings, of course. They were just physiological reactions caused by adrenaline, fight or flight, a very useful mechanism that had gotten him out of trouble more times than he cared to count. The airplane was looking after the flight part, he thought semihumorously. Which left fight.
Rowan would no doubt take care of that. She’d never been one to bite her tongue if she disagreed with him or disliked what he was doing; it was one of the reasons he’d married her, for the tilt of her chin and the defiant toss of her curly red hair.
Maybe she didn’t care about him enough now to think him worth a good fight.
He didn’t like that conclusion at all. With an impatient sigh Brant spread out the list of bird species and opened the book at page one, forcing himself to concentrate. After all, he didn’t want to disgrace himself by not knowing one end of a bird from the other. Especially in front of his ex-wife.
Rowan could have done without the connecting flight from Antigua being four hours late. Rick Williams from Toronto was the last of her group to arrive: the only other Canadian besides herself on the trip. The delay seemed like a bad omen, because it was the second hitch of the day; she and the rest of the group had had an unexpected five hours of birding in Antigua already today when their Grenada flight had also been late.
Rick’s flight should have landed in Grenada at six-thirty, in time for dinner with everyone else at the hotel. Instead it was now nearly ten forty-five and Rick still hadn’t come through customs.
His luggage, she thought gloomily. They’ve lost his luggage.
She checked with the security guard and was allowed into the customs area. Four people were standing at the desk which dealt with lost bags. The elderly woman she discounted immediately, and ran her eyes over the three men. The gray-haired gentleman was out; Rick Williams was thirty-two years old. Which left...her heart sprang into her throat like a grouse leaping from the undergrowth. The man addressing the clerk was the image of Brant.
She swallowed hard and briefly closed her eyes. She was tired, yes, but not that tired.
But when she looked again, the man had straightened to his full height, his backpack pulling his blue cotton shirt taut across his shoulders. His narrow hips and long legs were clad in well-worn jeans. There was a dusting of gray in the thick dark hair over his ears. That was new, she thought numbly. He’d never had any gray in his hair when they’d been married.
It wasn’t Brant. It couldn’t be.
But then the man turned to say something to the younger man standing beside him, and she saw the imperious line of his jaw, shadowed with a day’s dark beard, and the jut of his nose. It was Brant. Brant Curtis had turned up in the Grenada airport just as she was supposed to meet a member of one of her tours. Bad joke, she thought sickly, lousy coincidence, and dragged her gaze to the younger man. He must be Rick Williams.
Her eyes darted around the room. These was nowhere she could hide in the hopes that Brant would leave before Rick, and therefore wouldn’t see her. She couldn’t very well scuttle back through customs; they’d think she was losing her mind. Anyway, Rick was one of her clients, and she owed him whatever help she could give him if his bags were lost.
At least she’d had a bit of warning. She was exceedingly grateful for that, because she’d hate Brant to have seen all the shock and disbelief that must have been written large on her face in the last few moments; the harsh fluorescent lighting would have hidden none of it. Taking a deep breath, schooling her features to impassivity, Rowan walked toward the desk.
As if he’d sensed her presence Brant turned around, and for the first time in months she saw the piercing blue of his eyes, the blue of a desert sky. As they fastened themselves on her, not even the slightest trace of emotion crossed his face. Of course not, she thought savagely. He’d always been a master at hiding his feelings. It was one of the many things that had driven them apart, although he would never have acknowledged the fact. Rowan forced a smile to her lips and was fiercely proud that she sounded as impassive as he looked, “Well...what a surprise. Hello, Brant.”
“What the devil have you done to your hair?”
Nearly three years since he’d seen her and all he could talk about was her hair? “I had it cut.”
“For Pete’s sake, what for?”
A small part of her was wickedly pleased that she’d managed to disrupt his composure; it had never been easy to knock Brant off balance, his self-control was too formidable for that. Rowan ran her fingers through her short, ruffled curls. “Because I wanted to. And now you must excuse me...I’m supposed to be meeting someone.”
She turned to the younger man and said pleasantly, “You must be Rick Williams?”
The man glanced up from the form he was filling in; he smelled rather strongly of rum. “Nope. Sorry.” Doing a double take, he looked her up and down. “Extremely sorry.”
Rowan gritted her teeth. She rarely bothered with makeup on her tours, and her jeans and sport shirt were quite unexceptional. Why did men think that she could possibly be complimented when they eyed her like a specimen laid out on a tray? And where the heck was Rick Williams? If he’d missed the plane, why hadn’t he phoned her?
Brant said, “Rick couldn’t come. So I came in his place.”
“What?”
“Rick has a form of pneumonia and the doctors wouldn’t let him come,” Brant repeated patiently. “It was all rather at the last minute, so I didn’t bother letting you know.”
She sputtered, “You knew if you let me know I wouldn’t have let you come!”
“That’s true enough,” he said.
So that was why he hadn’t looked surprised to see her, he’d known all along she’d be there to meet him. Once again, he’d had the advantage of her. “Were you bored and thought you’d stir up a little trouble?” she spat. “From reading the newspapers, I’d have thought there were more than enough wars and famines in the world to get your attention without having to turn yourself into an ordinary tourist in the Caribbean.”
So she did care enough to fight, thought Brant. Interesting. Very interesting. He said blandly, “If we’re going to have a—er, disagreement, don’t you think we should at least go outside where there’s a semblance of privacy?”
Rowan looked around her. The young man who wasn’t Rick Williams was leering at her heaving chest; the customs officer was grinning at her. Trying to smother another uprush of pure rage, she managed, with a huge effort, to modulate her voice. “Is your baggage missing?”
Brant nodded. “They figure it’s gone on to Trinidad—should be here tomorrow. No big deal.”
“Have you finished filling in the forms?”
Another nod. “I’m ready to go anytime you are.”
“I’ll phone the airlines on the way out,” she said crisply, “and get you on the first flight back to Toronto. A birding trip is definitely not your thing.”
“No, you won’t. I’ve paid my money and I’m staying.”
She’d forgotten how much taller he was than her five feet nine. How big he was. “Brant, let’s not—”
He jerked his head at the door. “Outside. Not in here.”
He was right, of course. Her company would fire her on the spot if it could see how she was greeting a client. She pivoted, stalked through the glass doors into the open part of the terminal and then out into the dusky heat of a tropical night. The van was parked by the curb. She swung herself into the driver’s seat and took the key from the pocket of her jeans, shoving it into the ignition. Brant had climbed into the passenger seat. Turning to face him, Rowan said tautly, “So what’s going on here?”
Brant took his time to answer. He was still getting used to her haircut, to that moment of outrage by the baggage counter when he’d realized she’d changed something about herself that he’d loved, changed it without asking him—and if that wasn’t the height of irrationality he didn’t know what was. The new haircut, he decided reluctantly, suited her, emphasizing the slim line of her throat and the exquisite angles of her cheekbones. Her eyes, a rich brown in daylight, now matched the velvety darkness of the sky. Eyes to drown in...
He said equably, “I needed a vacation. Through the friend of a friend I heard about Rick’s pneumonia and thought I’d take his place. Don’t make such a big deal of it, Rowan.”
“If it’s no big deal, why don’t you just go home? Where you belong.”
You don’t belong with me, that’s what she was saying. A statement that truly riled him. “You used to say—fairly frequently, as I recall—that I never took time to smell the roses. Or, in this case, to watch the birds...you should be pleased I’m finally doing so.”
“Brant, let’s get something straight. What you do or don’t do is no longer my concern. Go watch the birds by all means. But don’t do it on my turf.”
“You’ve lost weight.”
Her exasperated hiss of breath sounded very loud in the confines of the van. Brant watched her fight for composure, her knuckles gripping the steering wheel as if she were throttling him, and discovered to his amazement that he was enjoying himself. Enjoying himself? Was that why he’d come to Grenada?
To Rowan’s nostrils drifted the faint tang of aftershave, the same one Brant had used during the four tempestuous years they’d been married. It brought with it a host of memories she didn’t dare bring to the surface; she’d be lost if she did. Nevertheless, she let her eyes wander with a lazy and reckless intimacy down his flat belly. “You’ve lost weight, as well,” she said and saw that, briefly, she’d stopped him in his tracks. “Am I right?” she added sweetly.
Brant glared at her in impotent fury. He knew exactly what was wrong. He wanted to kiss her. So badly that he could taste the soft yielding of her lips and the silken slide of her cheek, and feel the first stirring of his groin. But kissing Rowan wasn’t part of the plan.
Not that he’d had a plan. He’d acted on impulse in a way rare to him, and now he was faced—literally—with the consequences. Rowan. His ex-wife. His former wife. His divorced wife.
His wife.
He said levelly, knowing he was backing off from something he should have anticipated and hadn’t, “Look, it’s been a long day and I’m tired. Please, could we go to the hotel so I can catch up on some sleep?”
“Certainly,” she said. “But let me make something clear first. I’m doing my job in the next two weeks, Brant. A job I love and do well. You’re just another client to me. Because I’m not going to allow you to be anything else—do you understand?”
“I haven’t said I want to be anything else,” he remarked, and watched her lips tighten.
“Good,” she said viciously, and jammed the clutch into gear. The engine roared to life. She checked in the rearview mirror and pulled away from the curb.
Rowan was an excellent driver, and knew it; and she’d had the last twelve hours to get used to driving on the left. She whipped along the narrow streets, took the roundabout in fine style, and within fifteen minutes turned into the hotel, where she parked next to the rooms that were partway up the hill. “This is the only place we stay that isn’t in close vicinity of a beach,” she said, breaking a silence that to her, at least, had swarmed with things unsaid. “You’re in Room Nine—Rick had requested a single room.” She fished around in the little pack strapped to her waist “Here’s your key.”
She was holding it in her fingertips. To test his immunity, Brant deliberately closed his hand over hers; and as soon as he’d done so, knew he’d made a very bad mistake. Her skin was warm and smooth, her fingers with that supple strength he’d never forgotten. But they were as still in his grip as a trapped bird, and when his glance flew to her face he saw in it a reflection of his own dismay. Dismay? Who was he kidding? It wasn’t dismay. It was outright terror.
He snatched the key from her, its cool metal digging into his flesh. “What time do we get going in the morning?”
“Breakfast at six on the patio,” she babbled, “but you can sleep in if you want, there’s a really nice beach about fifteen minutes from the hotel and you’d probably rather have a day to yourself to rest up.”
“I’ll see you at six,” he announced and got out of the van as fast as he could. Room Eight was in darkness. A small light shone from Room Ten. Then Rowan hurried past him, unlocked the patio door to Room Ten and shut it with rather more force than was necessary. He watched as she pulled the curtains tight over the glass.
Brant stood very still under the burgeoning yellow moon. Frogs chirped in the undergrowth; palm fronds were etched against the star-strewn night sky in a way that at any other time he might have found beautiful.
But palm trees weren’t a priority right now. How could they be when his whole body was a raw ache of hunger? Sexual hunger. He wanted Rowan now, in his bed, in his arms, where she belonged...and to hell with the divorce. How was he going to get a minute’s sleep, knowing she was on the other side of the wall from him?
He’d been a fool to come here, to let Gabrielle talk him into an escapade worthy of an adolescent. If he were smart he’d take Rowan’s advice and get on the first plane home. Tomorrow.
Soft-footed, Brant walked over to his own door and inserted the key. The door opened smoothly. He closed it behind him, and heard the smallest of creaks from the room next to his. Rowan. Getting into bed. Did she still sleep naked?
He sat down on the wicker chair, banging his fists rhythmically on his knees. What kind of an idiot was he that he’d neglected to take into account the effect Rowan had had on him from the first time he’d ever seen her, arguing with a customs officer in the Toronto airport seven years ago? He’d engineered a conversation with her that day, had touched her wrist and had seen the instant flare of awareness in her face, the primitive recognition of female to male, of mate to mate. Would he ever forget how her pulse had leaped beneath his fingertip? That all-revealing signal had engraved itself on his flesh within five minutes of meeting her, and would probably remain with him as long as he lived.
Two days later they’d fallen into bed in his condo; three weeks later they were married. A month after that he’d left for Rwanda, and the fights between them had started, fights every bit as passionate as their ardent and imperative couplings.
Another tiny creak came from the room next door. He wanted to kick the wall in, gather her in his arms, make love to her the whole night through.
But this wasn’t Myanmar or Afghanistan or Liberia. He couldn’t bash his way into the next room. Rowan wasn’t an arms smuggler or a drug dealer; she was his ex-wife.
How he hated that word! Almost as much as he hated the prospect, now almost a certainty, that he was in for one of his nights of insomnia, nights when too many of the nightmare images he usually kept at bay would crowd through his defenses, attacking him from every angle like an army of fanatic rebels.
Normally it took every bit of his strength and integrity to hold himself together during those nights; which were, fortunately, rare. Tonight he had the added, overwhelming torment of Rowan’s presence on the other side of the wall. Would he ever forget the first time they’d made love? Her entrancing mixture of shyness and boldness, her astonishing generosity, her heart-catching beauty...he could remember every detail of that afternoon, which had blended into a night equally and wondrously passionate.
Brant buried his face in his hands, his back curved like a bow, a host of memories stabbing him like arrows.
CHAPTER TWO
ROWAN lay ramrod still in her double bed. The numbers of the digital alarm clock on the night table announced that it was 2:06. If she moved at all, the springs creaked. If she tossed and turned, sooner or later her elbow or her head thumped the wall. The wall that lay between her and Brant.
Her eyes ached. Her body twitched. Her nerves were singing as loudly as the frogs. And all the while her brain seethed with the knowledge that Brant was lying less than a foot away from her, separated from her by a thin barrier of stucco and plaster.
Separated from her by too many fights, too many angry words, too many long months of worrying about him and waiting for him, all the while trying to keep her own life on track. That last departure for Colombia had been, classically, the straw to break the back of their marriage. That and the woman called Gabrielle Doucette.
She had no idea how she was going to get through the next two weeks. No idea whatsoever.
2:09. She had to get some sleep. Tomorrow was a full day, although thank goodness she’d hired a driver and wouldn’t have to negotiate roads that could be hair-raising at the best of times. Why had Brant come here? What stupidity had impelled him to seek her out just when she was beginning to hope that one day soon she might heal, that hovering somewhere on the horizon there was the possibility, however faint, of putting the past behind her and looking for a new relationship? One that would give her everything Brant had refused her.
How dare he interfere with her life, he who had damaged it so badly? How dare he?
Somewhere between two-thirty and quarter to three Rowan fell asleep as suddenly as if she’d been hit on the head. She woke sharp at 5:20; during the years she’d spent guiding tours, she’d trained herself to beat the alarm by ten minutes to give herself that space to think over the day ahead. As so often happened, everything seemed crystal clear to her now that it was morning.
She’d overreacted last night. Big time. And why not? It had been late at night. Her ex-husband had appeared totally unexpectedly and had thrown her for a loop. And again, why not? In all her thirty-one years he was the only man she’d ever fallen in love with; so she’d fallen in a major way. No holding back. No keeping part of herself for herself. She’d thrown herself into their relationship with passion, enthusiasm and a deep joy; and when, all too soon, rifts had appeared, she’d worked with all her heart to mend them. In consequence, the final and utter failure of their marriage had devastated her.
But that was a long time ago.
The only thing she’d have to beware of was touching him. The physical bond between them had never ruptured, not even in the worst of times, and when he’d wrapped his fingers around hers last night as she’d passed him the key, all the old magic had instantly exploded to life, like fireworks glittering against the blackness of sky.
He’d seduced her—literally—from the beginning. She mustn’t, for her own sake, allow him to do it again.
There were six other people in the group; she’d have lots of protection. Plus the itinerary would keep everyone busy. On which note, Rowan thought lightly, you’d better get moving. She scrambled out of bed, headed for the shower and left her room at ten to six.
Breakfast started at six on a charming open patio twined with scarlet hibiscus and the yellow trumpet-shaped flowers called Allamanda. The six other members of the group were tucking into slices of juicy papaya; Brant was nowhere to be seen. Maybe he’d decided to heed her advice and take the day off, thought Rowan; or, even better, fly back to Toronto. She beamed at everyone, inquired how they’d all slept, and heard Brant’s deep voice say from behind her, “Good morning—sorry I missed seeing all of you last night.”
Rowan said evenly, “This is Brant Curtis, from Toronto. He’s taking Rick’s place, because Rick’s ill with pneumonia.” Quickly she introduced the others to Brant, then said, “I’m sure you won’t remember everyone’s name. But you’ll soon get to know each other. Coffee, Brant?”
“Shower first, coffee second,” he said easily, “that’s been my routine for a long time.”
He was smiling at her. Often they’d showered together; and they’d both loved Viennese coffee ground fresh and sweetened with maple syrup. Willing herself not to snarl at him, Rowan said, “Personally I prefer herbal tea—can’t take the caffeine anymore.”
Peg and May, the two elderly sisters from Dakota who looked fluttery and sweet and knew more about birds than most encyclopedias, passed Brant the plate of papaya and the cream for his coffee; Sheldon and Karen, the newlyweds from Maine, gave him the bemused smiles they gave everything and everyone; Steve and Natalie, unmarried and so argumentative that Rowan sincerely hoped they weren’t contemplating marriage, both eyed Brant speculatively. Steve no doubt saw Brant as a potential rival for Alpha male; whereas Natalie was probably wanting to haul him off to bed the minute Steve was looking the other way.
Brant was a big boy. Let Brant deal with Natalie.
Peg said, “You missed some wonderful shorebirds in Antigua yesterday, Brant. But you’ll have lots of time to catch up...I’m sure you saw the mangrove cuckoo in the breadfruit tree?”
“And the black form of the bananaquit in the bougainvillea?” May added.
Brant took a deep draft of coffee; he was going to need it. He said cautiously, dredging his memory for the pictures in the bird book, “I thought a bananaquit was yellow?” and realized he’d said exactly the right thing. Peg and May launched into an enthusiastic and mystifying discussion about isolation and Darwinian theory, to which he nodded and looked as though he understood every word, munching all the while on a deliciously crumbly croissant smothered with jam.
Natalie, who was wearing a cotton shirt with rather a lot of buttons undone, smoothed her sleek black hair back from her face and pouted her fuschia-colored lips at him. “On the way back to our rooms, Brant, I’ll have to show you where I saw the crested hummingbird.”
“You can show me first,” Steve said aggressively; he had the build of a wrestler and the buzzed haircut of a marine.
“Oh,” piped Karen, who had fluffy blond curls and artless blue eyes, “what’s that black bird with the long tail on the ledge of the patio?”
“A male Carib grackle,” Rowan replied. “The equivalent of our starling, we’ll be seeing a lot of them.”
Sheldon, Karen’s husband, said nothing; he was too busy gazing at Karen in adoration.
Everyone else, Brant saw, had brought binoculars to the table; he’d forgotten his. Rowan looked as though she hadn’t had much more sleep than he’d had. Good, he thought meanly, and took another croissant. He was already beginning to realize that keeping up with this lot was going to take a fair bit of energy and that he probably should have read more of the bird book and thought less about Rowan on the long flight from Toronto.
Not that he was here to see birds.
He was here to see Rowan—right?
By the time they left the hotel, the sky had clouded over and rain was spattering the windshield. Their first stop was an unprepossessing stretch of scrubby forest on the side of a hillside, the residence of an endangered species called the Grenada dove. Brant trooped with the rest up the slope, thorns snatching at his shirt and bare wrists, rain dripping down his neck. Wasn’t April supposed to be the dry season? Where was the famous sunshine of the Caribbean? Where were the white sand beaches? And why was Rowan way ahead of him and he last in line? Natalie, not to his surprise, was directly in front of him, an expensive camera looped over her shoulder, her hips undulating like a model’s on a catwalk. He’d met plenty of Natalies over the years, and avoided them like the plague; especially when they were teamed with bruisers like Steve.
When they were all thoroughly enmeshed in the forest, Rowan took out a tape deck and played a recording of the dove, its mournful cooing not improving Brant’s mood. She was intent on what she was doing, her eyes searching the forest floor, all her senses alert. Maybe if he blatted like a dove she’d notice he was here, he thought sourly.
They all trudged further up the hillside and she played the tape again; then moved to another spot, where there was a small clearing. Rowan replayed the tape. From higher up the slope a soft, plangent cooing came in reply. She whispered, “Hear that? Check out that patch of undergrowth by the gumbo-limbo tree.”
Brant didn’t know a gumbo-limbo tree from a coconut palm. Peg said, “Oh, there’s the dove! Do you see it, May? Working its way between the thorn bushes.”
“I can see it,” Natalie remarked. “Not sure I can get a photo, though.”
“Then why can’t I find it?” Steve fumed.
“Come over here, Steve,” Rowan said, “I’ve got it in the scope.”
She’d been carrying a large telescope on a tripod; Brant watched Steve stoop to look in the eyepiece. Then Karen and Sheldon peered in. Rowan said, “Look for the white shoulders and the white patch on the head. Brant, have you seen it?”
He hadn’t. Obediently he walked over and looked through the lens, seeing a dull brown pigeon with a crescent of white on its side. Natalie rubbed against him with her hip. “My turn, Brant,” she murmured.
May—who had mauve-rinsed hair while Peg had blue—said to him, “Isn’t that a wonderful bird?”
She was grinning from ear to ear; Brant couldn’t possibly have spoiled her pleasure. “A terrific bird,” he said solemnly.
Ten minutes later they emerged back into the cleared land at the base of the scrub forest, and Rowan swept the area with her binoculars. Then she gasped in amazement. “Look—near the papaya tree. A pair of them!”
Brant raised his binoculars. Two more doves were pecking at the earth, their white markings clearly visible. Peg and May sighed with deep satisfaction, Natalie adjusted her zoom lens for a picture and Rowan said exultantly, “This is one of the rarest birds of the whole trip and we’ve seen three of them! I can’t believe it.”
Instead of staring at the doves, Brant stared at Rowan. Her cheeks were flushed, her face alight with pleasure; she used to look that way when he’d walked in the door after a three-week absence, he thought painfully. Or after they’d made love.
She glanced up, caught his fixed gaze on her and narrowed her eyes, closing him out; her chin was raised, her damp curls like tiny flames. Steve snapped, “Hurry up and put the scope on them, Rowan.”
Rowan gave a tiny start. “Sorry,” she said, and lowered the tripod.
Don’t you talk to my wife like that.
His own words, which had been entirely instinctive, played themselves in Brant’s head like one of Rowan’s tapes. She wasn’t his wife. Not anymore. And why should it matter to him how a jerk like Steve behaved? Furious with himself, he raised his glasses and watched the two doves work their way along a clump of bushes.
Then Peg said, “A pair of blue-black grassquits at the edge of the sugarcane,” and everyone’s binoculars, with the exception of Brant’s, swiveled to the left.
“How beautiful,” May sighed.
“This is the only island we’ll see them,” Peg added.
“Take a look in the scope, Karen,” Rowan offered.
They all lined up for a turn. Brant was last “All I can see is sugarcane,” he said.
Quickly Rowan edged him aside, adjusting the black levers. Her left hand was bare of rings, he saw with a nasty flick of pain, as if a knife had scored his bare skin. “There they are, they’d moved,” she said, and backed away.
Into his vision leaped a small glossy bird and its much duller mate. A pair, he thought numbly, and suddenly wished with all his heart that he was back in his condo in Toronto, or striding along the bustling streets of Yangon, Myanmar’s capital city. Anything would be better than having Rowan so close and yet so unutterably far away.
They tramped back to the van, adding several other birds to the list on the way, all of whose names Brant forgot as soon as they were mentioned. He couldn’t sit beside Rowan; she was in the front with the driver. He took the jump seat next to Peg and tried to listen to the tale of habitat destruction that had made the dove such a rarity.
They drove north next, to the rain forests in the center of the island, where dutifully Brant took note of hummingbirds, tanagers, swifts, flycatchers and more bananaquits. Not even the sight of a troop of Mona monkeys cavorting in a bamboo grove could raise his spirits. His mood was more allied to the thunderclouds hovering on the horizon, a mood as black-hearted as the black-feathered and omnipresent grackles.
When they reached some picnic tables by a murky lake, Rowan busied herself laying out paper plates and cutlery, producing drinks and a delicious pasta salad from a cooler, as well as crusty rolls, fruit and cookies out of various bags. She did all this with a cheerful efficiency that grated on Brant’s nerves. How could she be so happy when he felt like the pits? How could she joke with a macho idiot like Steve?
He sat a little apart from the rest of the group, feeding a fair bit of his lunch to a stray dog that hovered nearby. He had considerable fellow feeling for it; however, Rowan wasn’t into throwing him anything, not even the smallest of scraps. To her he was just one more member of the group; she’d make sure he saw the birds and got fed and that was where her responsibility ended.
He felt like a little kid exiled from the playground. He felt like a grown man with a lump in his gut bigger than a crusty roll and ten times less digestible. He fed the last of his roll to the dog and buried his nose in the bird book, trying to sort out bananaquits from grassquits.
Their next destination was a mangrove swamp at the northern tip of the island. Although it had stopped raining, the sweep of beach and the crash of waves seemed to increase Brant’s sense of alienation.
Rowan glanced around. “The trail circling the swamp is at the far end of those palm trees.”
“I’m going to wait here,” Brant said. “I can see the van, so I’ll know when you get back.”
“Suit yourself,” she said with an indifferent shrug.
May protested, “But you might miss the egrets.”
“Or the stilts,” Peg said.
“I’m going for a swim,” Brant said firmly.
May brightened. “Maybe you’ll see a tropic bird.”
He didn’t know a tropic bird from a gull; but he didn’t tell her that. “Maybe I will.”
“I wish you’d told us this morning we’d be at a beach, Rowan,” Natalie said crossly. “I’d love a swim.”
“You came here to photograph birds,” Steve announced, and grabbed her by the wrist. She glared at him and he glared right back.
“We’d better go,” Rowan said quickly. “Once we’ve trekked around the swamp we have a long drive home.”
Brant had put on his trunks under his jeans that morning; he left his gear with the driver of the van, shucked off his clothes and ran into the water, feeling the waves seize him in their rough embrace. He swam back and forth in the surf as fast as he could, blanking from his mind everything but the salt sting of the sea and the pull of his muscles. When he finally looked up, the group was trailing along the beach toward him.
He hauled himself out of the waves, picked up his clothes from the sand and swiped at his face with his towel. Rowan was first in line. He jogged over to her, draping his towel over his shoulder. “Did I miss the rarest egret in the world?”
Midafternoon had always been the low point of the day for Rowan; and the sight of Brant running across the sand toward her in the briefest of swim trunks wasn’t calculated to improve her mood. She said coldly, staring straight ahead, “There was a white-tailed tropic bird flying right over your head.”
“No kidding.”
She hated the mockery in his voice, hated his closeness even more. Then his elbow bumped her arm. “Sorry,” he said.
He wasn’t sorry; she knew darn well he’d done it on purpose. But Peg and May were right behind her and she couldn’t possibly let loose the flood of words that was crowding her tongue. She bit her lip, her eyes skidding sideways of their own accord. The sunlight was glinting on the water that trickled down Brant’s ribs and through the dark hair that curled on his chest. His belly was as flat as a board, corded with muscle; she didn’t dare look lower.
To her infinite relief a night heron flew over the trees. Grabbing her binoculars, Rowan blanked from her mind the image of Brant’s sleek shoulders and taut ribs. He meant nothing to her now. Nothing. She had to hold to that thought or she’d be sunk.
The yellow-crowned night heron was obliging enough to settle itself in the treetops, where it wobbled rather endearingly in the wind. Karen had never seen one before. Quickly Rowan set up the scope, immersing herself in her job again, and when next she looked Brant was standing by the van fully clothed.
Thank God for small mercies, she thought, and shepherded her little flock back into the van. On the drive home along the coast she gave herself a stern lecture about keeping her cool when she was anywhere in Brant’s vicinity, whether he was clothed or unclothed. She couldn’t bear for him to know that the sight of his big rangy body had set her heart thumping in her breast like a partridge drumming on a tree stump in mating season.
It was none of his business. He’d lost any right to know her true feelings; he’d trampled on them far too often.
He was a client of the company she worked for, one more client on one more trip.
Maybe if she repeated this often enough, she’d start to believe it. Maybe.
CHAPTER THREE
AT DINNER Brant ate curried chicken and mango ice cream as though they were so much cardboard, and tried to talk to Karen, whose sole topic of conversation was Sheldon, rather than to Natalie, whose every topic was laced with sexual innuendo. Rowan was sitting at the other end of the table laughing and chatting with Steve, May and Peg; she looked carefree and confident. He had the beginnings of a headache.
Would he be a coward to fly back to Toronto? Or was it called common sense instead?
People dispersed after dinner; it was nine-fifty and they had to be up before six to leave for the airport, to fly to the next island on the itinerary. Rowan had already gone to her room. Brant found himself standing outside her patio doors, where, once again, the curtains were drawn tight. Without stopping to consider what he was doing, let alone why, he raised his fist, tapped on the glass, and in a voice that emulated Steve’s gravelly bass he said, “Rowan? Steve here. Do you have any Tylenol? Natalie’s got a headache.”
“Just a second,” she called.
Then the door opened and at the same instant that her eyes widened in shock, Brant shoved, his foot in the gap and pushed it still wider, wide enough that he could step through. Rowan said in a furious whisper, “Brant, get out of here!”
He closed the door behind him. She had started undressing; her feet were bare and her shirt pulled out of her waistband, the top two buttons undone. In the soft lamplight her skin looked creamy and her hair glowed like a banked fire.
She spat, “Go away and leave me alone—you’re good at doing that, you’ve had lots of practice.”
“For God’s sake, leave the past out of this!”
“I despise you for pulling a trick like that, pretending you were Steve. Although it’s just what I should expect from someone so little in tune with his feelings, so removed from—”
Brant had had enough. With explosive energy he said, “I’m not leaving until you tell me how else I’m going to get five minutes alone with you.”
“I don’t want ten seconds alone with you!”
“We’re not going to spend the next two weeks pretending I’ve come all this way just to see a bunch of dumpy old pigeons.”
Rowan felt her body freeze to stillness; in the midst of that stillness she remembered the resolve she’d made in the van. To keep her cool, her feelings hidden. She wasn’t doing very well in that department so far; she’d better see what she could do to improve matters. Forcing herself to lower her voice, she said, “So why not tell me why you’ve come here, Brant?”
He gaped at her. Because Gabrielle told me to? That would go over like a lead balloon. “I just wanted to see you,” he said lamely.
“You’ve seen me,” she replied without a trace of emotion. “Now you can go back to Toronto. Or to whatever benighted part of the globe you’re writing about next. Either way, I want you to stay away from me.”
“Don’t I mean anything to you anymore?”
He hadn’t meant to say that. Her lips thinned. She answered tersely, “If you’re asking if I’ll ever forget you, the answer’s probably no—the damage went too deep for that. If you’re asking if I want to revive any kind of a relationship with you, the answer’s absolutely no. And for the very same reason.”
“You’ve changed.”
“I would hope so.”
“I didn’t mean it as a compliment! You never used to be so cold. So hard.”
“Then you can congratulate yourself on what you’ve accomplished.”
“You never used to be bitchy, either,” he retorted, his temper rising in direct proportion to his need to puncture her self-possession.
“I’d call it a good dose of the truth rather than bitchiness. But there’s no reason we should agree on that, we never agreed on anything else.” Suddenly Rowan ran her fingers through her cropped hair, her pent-up breath escaping in a long sigh. “This is really stupid, standing here trading insults with each other. It’s been a long day and I’ve got to be up at five-thirty. So I’m just going to say one more thing, Brant, then I want you to leave. I made a mistake seven years ago when I married you. I’ve paid for that mistake—it cost me plenty. And now I’m moving on. For all kinds of obvious reasons I don’t need your help to do that. Get yourself on the first plane back to Toronto and kindly stay out of my hfe.”
Her fists were clenched at her sides and she was very pale. The woman Brant had been married to would have been yelling at him by now, passion exuding from every pore, her words pouring out as clamorously as a waterfall tumbles over a cliff. Had she really changed that much? Even worse, was he, as she’d said, responsible for that change?
Rowan picked up the receiver of the phone by her bed, knowing she had to end this. “I’ll give you ten seconds. Then I’m calling the front desk.”
“Go right ahead,” he drawled. “I’ll make sure I tell them I’m your ex-husband. I’ll tell Natalie, too—she’ll spread the word to the group, I’m sure.”
“You wouldn’t!”
He bared his teeth in a smile. “I’ve never been known for fighting fair. Had you forgotten?”
She hadn’t. One of his weapons had always been his body, of course; his body and the searing sexual bond between the two of them. Suddenly frightened, Rowan said, “Brant, don’t do this. You’re only making things worse between us.”
“According to you, that’s impossible.”
She took another deep breath and said steadily, “I can only speak for myself here. I still have some good memories—some wonderful memories—of the time we spent together. But when you force your way into my room like this, and threaten to expose my private life to a group of strangers who happen to be my business clients, then I start to wonder if I’m kidding myself about those memories—I was deluded, I wasn’t seeing the real man, he never existed. Don’t do that to me, Brant. Please.”
Some of the old intensity was back in her voice, and there was no doubting her sincerity. Shaken, in spite of himself, Brant blurted, “Is there someone else in your life, Rowan?”
“No,” she said flatly. “But I want there to be.”
Relief, rage and chagrin battled in his chest: he’d never meant to ask that question. Where the devil was his famous discretion, his ability to control a conversation and learn exactly what he wanted to know from someone who’d had no intention of revealing it? His boss would fire him if he could see him in action right now. Defeated by a woman? Brant Curtis?
He said thickly, “One kiss. For old time’s sake.”
Panic flared in her face. She grabbed the phone and cried, “You come one step nearer and I’ll tell everyone in Grenada that you’re the world-famous journalist, Michael Barton. So help me, I will.”
Michael Barton was Brant’s pseudonym, and only a very small handful of people knew that Brant Curtis and Michael Barton were one and the same man; it was this closely guarded secret that enabled him as Brant Curtis, civil engineer and skilled negotiator, to enter with impunity whichever country he was investigating. He felt an ill-timed flare of admiration for Rowan; it was quite clear that she’d do it, she whom he’d trusted for years with his double identity. “You sure don’t want me to kiss you, do you?” he jeered. “Why not, Rowan? Afraid we’ll end up in bed?”
“Look up divorce in the dictionary, why don’t you? We’re through, finished, kaput. I wouldn’t go to bed with you if you were the last man on earth.”
“Bad cliché, my darling.”
With a huge effort Rowan prevented herself from throwing the telephone at him, cord and all. Keep your cool, Rowan. Keep your cool. She said evenly, “It happens to be true.”
“But why so adamant? Who are you trying to convince?”
She said with a sudden, corrosive bitterness, “The one man in the world who never allowed himself to be convinced of anything I said.”
She meant it. Brant thought blankly. Her bitterness was real, laden with a pain whose depths horrified him. He stood very still, at a total loss for words. He earned his living—an extraordinarily good living—by words. Yet right now he couldn’t find anything to say to the woman who had been his lover and his wife. She looked exhausted, he realized with a pang of what could only be compassion, her shoulders slumped, her cheeks pale as the stuccoed walls.
As if she had read his mind, she said in a low voice, “Brant, I work fifteen-hour days for two weeks on this trip and I’ve got to get some sleep.”
“Yeah...I’m sorry,” he muttered, and headed for the door. Sorry for what? For bursting into her room? Or for killing the fieriness in her spirit all those months ago?
Was her accusation true? Had he never allowed her to change his mind about anything? If so, no wonder she wouldn’t give him the time of day.
The door slid smoothly open and shut just as smoothly. He didn’t once look back. Instead of going to his own room, he tramped down the driveway and left the hotel grounds. He’d noticed a bar not that far down the road. He’d order a double rum and hope it would make him sleep. Or six of them in a row. And he wouldn’t allow his own good memories—of which there were many—to come to the surface.
He’d be done in if he did.
The patio door closed. As though she couldn’t help herself, Rowan peered through the gap in the curtain and watched Brant’s tall figure march down the driveway, until it blended with the darkness and disappeared. Shivering, she clicked the lock and pulled the curtain tightly shut. After dragging off the rest of her clothes, she pulled on silk pajamas and got into bed, yanking the covers over her head.
What would have happened if Brant had kissed her? Would he be lying beside her now, igniting her body to passion as only he could?
She slammed on her mental brakes, for to follow that thought was to invite disaster. She hadn’t let him kiss her. She’d kept some kind of control over herself and over him, in a way that was new. Dimly she felt rather proud of this.
Perhaps, she thought with a flare of hope, something good would come out of Brant’s reappearance in her life. Perhaps there was a reason for it, after all. Inadvertently she’d been given an opportunity to lay the ghosts of the past to rest. If she could detach herself from him in the next two weeks, really detach herself, then when she went home she’d be free of him. Free to start over and find someone else.
She wanted children, and a man with a normal job. She wanted stability and continuity and a house in the country. She wanted to love and be loved.
By someone safe. Not by Brant with his restless spirit and his inexhaustible appetite for danger. Never again by a man like Brant.
Freedom, she thought, and closed her eyes. Freedom...
At the St. Vincent airport, while he was waiting to go through customs, Brant phoned three different airlines to see if he could get back to Toronto. It was nearing the end of the season, he was told; bookings were heavy. He could go standby. He could be rerouted in various complicated and extremely expensive ways. But he couldn’t get on a plane today and end up in Toronto by nightfall.
He banged down the phone and took his passport out. When he rejoined the group he saw that he wasn’t the only one to have left it. Natalie and Steve were standing to one side. Natalie was, very nearly, screaming; Steve was, unquestionably, yelling. Their language made Brant wince, their mutual fury made him glance at Rowan. She was talking to May and Peg, a fixed smile on her face.
Then Natalie stomped over to Rowan. Not bothering to lower her voice, her catlike beauty distorted by rage, she announced, “Get me a single room for the rest of this trip! I’m not going anywhere near that—” and here her language, once again, achieved gutter level.
May said crisply, “Young woman, that’s enough!”
Peg added, “This is a public place on a foreign island and you’re disgracing our country.”
Natalie’s head swerved. “Who the hell do—”
“Be quiet,” Peg ordered.
“This minute,” her cohort seconded.
As Natalie’s jaw dropped, Brant threw back his head and started to laugh, great bellows of laughter that released the tension in his chest and the ache in his belly that had been with him ever since he’d first seen Rowan in the airport at Grenada. Uncertainly Karen smiled and Sheldon joined her, a smile tugged at the corner of Rowan’s mouth and Steve said vengefully, “Shut up, Natalie.”
For a moment it looked as though Natalie was about to launch into another tirade. But then the custom’s officer said, “Next, please,” and Rowan said briskly, “Your turn, Natalie.”
As Natalie stepped over the painted line and fumbled for her passport, Steve said, “Two single rooms, Rowan, and it’s the last time I’ll travel anywhere with that b—” he caught sight of May’s clamped jaw and finished hastily “—broad.”
“I’ll do my best,” Rowan said.
“You’d better,” said Steve.
“There’s a marvelous word in the English language, Steve, called please,” Brant interposed softly. “You might try it sometime. Because I don’t like it when you order Rowan around.”
Steve took a step toward him, his fists bunched. Even more softly, Brant said, “Don’t do it. You’ll end up flat on the floor seeing a lot more than birds.”
This whole trip was getting away from her, Rowan thought wildly. A screaming match in the airport and now the threat of a brawl. But, try as she might, she couldn’t take her eyes off Brant. Once, she remembered, she and he had been walking down Yonge Street and had been accosted by a couple of teenagers with knives; that evening Brant had had the same air of understated menace, of a lean and altogether dangerous confidence in his ability to defend both himself and her.
It wasn’t his job to defend her. Not anymore. Besides which, dammit, it was time she asserted her own authority. “I’ve said I’ll do my best, Steve, that’s all I can do,” she announced. “And you’ll both have to pay extra money, you do realize that? Karen and Sheldon, why don’t you go through customs next?” That, at least, would keep Natalie and Steve apart. She’d have to get on the phone at the hotel in St. Vincent and rearrange all the other hotels. And if Steve and Natalie had a reconciliation before the end of the trip, they could darn well sleep apart. It would be good for them.
Not entirely by coincidence, she glanced at Brant. He was watching her, laughter gleaming anew in his blue eyes. It’s not funny, she told herself, and winked at him, her lips twitching; then suddenly remembered she was supposed to be keeping her cool. What a joke! How could she possibly keep her cool with Natalie and Steve fighting like alley cats, Peg and May acting like the imperious headmistresses of the very snootiest of private schools, and Karen and Sheldon looking superior because they knew they’d never do anything so crude as to argue?
Not to mention Brant. Handsome, sexy, irresistible Brant.
She looked away, flustered and upset. Deep down she could admit to herself that she was extremely gratified Brant had sprung to her defense. And explain that one, Rowan Carter.
The hotel in St. Vincent boasted enough bougainvillea and palm trees for any postcard, as well as a dining room open to a view of the beach and a bar with pleasant wicker furmture right at the edge of the beige-colored sand. Rowan was able to get Steve and Natalie single rooms in separate wings of the hotel, and suggested they all meet for an early lunch. She then had the baggage delivered to all the right rooms, got on the phone to the rest of the hotels, and did some groceries for the picnic lunch the next day. By which time she was supposed to be in the dining room.
Steve sat down on one side of her, Brant on the other. Natalie, she saw with an unholy quiver of amusement, immediately seized the chair on Brant’s far side. Okay, Rowan, she told herself, this time you really are going to keep your cool, and said brightly, “This afternoon we’ll head up to the rain forest, where we should see St. Vincent parrots.”
“Excellent,” said May.
“Exciting,” said Peg.
Steve nudged Rowan with something less than subtlety. “I’ll stand you a drink in the bar for every parrot we see.”
Over my dead body, thought Brant.
“I don’t think so,” Rowan responded. “We saw well over a dozen on our last trip here.”
“Steve excels at drinking too much, it’s his only talent,” Natalie said sweetly. “I bet you can hold your liquor, Brant.”
“So much so that I have no need to prove it,” Brant replied. “Rowan, how long a drive to the forest?”
He was smiling at her, his irises the deep blue of the sea, his dark hair ruffled by the breeze that came from the sea. We’re divorced, Rowan thought frantically, we’re finished, we’re over and done with, and gulped, “Oh, about an hour, depending if we stop on the way.”
“The St. Vincent parrots are the ones with yellow and blue on them.”
“That’s right, although it’s more like gold and bronze, along with blue, green and white.”
“You look tired,” he said quietly.
She was tired. Her period was due soon, and she knew she’d have to dose herself with medication to get through the cramps on the first day. She said in a loud voice, “Because they’re such handsome birds, they’ve been poached a lot for the parrot trade.”
This launched Peg and May into a discussion about the complexities of economics and environmentalism, and thankfully Rowan focused on her conch salad. When they’d all finished eating, she asked everyone to meet in the lobby in fifteen minutes, and scurried off to ask the kitchen if they’d cook some tortellini for the picnic lunch the next day.
The others went to their rooms. Brant filled his canteen with water from the table, enjoying the breeze, remembering how the skin beneath Rowan’s dark eyes was shadowed blue. He’d never before considered how hard she worked; her job had always seemed like a piece of cake compared to his. Not really worth his attention.
This wasn’t a particularly comfortable thought. His eyes fell to her chair; she’d left her haversack there. When he bent to pick it up so he could return it to her, he discovered that it was astonishingly heavy. Without stopping to think, he slid the zipper open and looked inside.
What for? Photos of himself? That was a laugh. Photos of another man? That wouldn’t be one bit funny.
She wasn’t dating anyone else. She’d told him so. And in all the years he’d known Rowan, she’d never tied to him.
Brant was highly skilled at swift searches. The weight of the haversack was due to binoculars, a camera and a zoom lens. No photos turned up. But in a pocket deep in a back compartment he found something that made his pulses lurch, then thrum in his ears. His fingers were caressing the cool ceramic surface of the earrings he’d had designed for her, earrings fashioned like the berries of the rowan tree.
“What are you doing?”
Like a little boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar, Brant looked up. He fumbled for the earrings and held them up. “These were the first present I ever gave you.”
She whispered ferociously, “You’re on vacation, Brant—but you can’t give it a rest, can you? You’ve always got to be the perfect investigator, the one who invades and violates the privacy of others for your own ends. Why don’t you just lay off?”
“Why were these earrings buried in your haversack?”
“That’s none of your damned business!”
She was swearing at him, he thought in deep relief; the ice-cold, controlled woman of last night was gone. In her place was a woman whose eyes blazed, whose cheeks were stained red with rage and whose breasts—those delectable breasts—were heaving. He retorted, “Just answer the question.”
“Oh, because I’m dying with love for you,” she stormed. “I’m obsessed with you, I think about you night and day, week in, week out. Hadn’t you guessed that? Or could it just possibly be because I’d planned to wear them on this trip since they’re kind of neat earrings and when you arrived I decided against it, in case I put any ideas in your head?” She snorted. “I don’t need to put any ideas in your head, you can come up with more than enough all by yourself.”
“I didn’t—”
“I’m actually starting to be pleased that you’re here, Brant Curtis, and how do you feel about that? Do you know why?” She didn’t stop long enough for him to answer. “You’re confirming all the reasons I left you. Every last one of them. By the time you get on the plane in Antigua to go home, I’ll be free as a—as a bird, and don’t you dare tell me that’s another cliché. I’m going to get on with my life. Without you. And I’m beginning to think I’ll have you to thank for that.”
So angry he was beyond thought, Brant closed the distance between them in two long strides. Taking her furious face in his hands, the earrings digging into her cheek, he planted a kiss full on her open mouth.
Rowan kicked out at him; his tongue sought all the sweetness he’d missed so desperately for so long, and from behind them Peg gasped, “Oh, my goodness!”
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